What is a Facebook Pixel and how do I install it?

We’ve all been there: after looking at a product on a company’s website, adverts featuring it start popping up all over the place. That happens due to something called retargeting, and when it takes place on Facebook and Instagram it’s being driven by a Facebook Pixel. The nifty little tool can be used by anyone with a website, Facebook Page and Ads account. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to set up your Facebook Pixel for your business.

WHAT IS FACEBOOK PIXEL AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

So, WHAT is a Facebook Pixel? Well, we won’t get too technical here, but in a nutshell, it’s a piece of code which, when added to your website, acts like a cookie. When a Facebook or Instagram user lands on your site the cookie activates, and Facebook records the visit. The user is then added to a list of ‘Website Visitors’ that you can target with adverts.

The beauty of the Facebook Pixel is that it can track a user across your website. This means that it can see which individual pages a person has looked at. Using this information, you can then build different audiences based on their behavior. For example, if someone has looked a product but not purchased it, you could target them with an advert featuring that product. Airbnb often use this tactic to remind users of homes they’ve recently viewed on the site.

Facebook does this by using ‘Events’. Facebook’s provides a set of pre-defined Events (such as visits to an individual website page or initiating checkout), or you can also work with a developer to create specific events to suite your business.

HOW DO I SET UP FACEBOOK PIXEL?

To create a Facebook Pixel, you need to have set up a Business Manager and Ad account for your business. If you haven’t done that, you can follow our How to Set Up Facebook Business guide.

Click the menu link in the top left-hand corner (next to the Facebook logo).

Hover over the All Tools link to open up the full menu.

Click Pixels in the Measure & Report This will open a page that looks like this.

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

5. Click the green Create a pixel This will open a pop-up box which will ask for your website URL. Enter this and click Create.

6. Facebook will then give you the option to set up your Pixel using a partner account or by editing your website’s code.

If your website is built using one of the partners (including Squarespace, Shopify, WordPress), things just got far easier for you! You can ignore the rest of this blog post and simply select your partner to be guided through the specific steps you need to take to set your Pixel up.

If you don’t use one of the partners, select Set up Manually.

7. Facebook will then display a pop up that looks like this

8. The pop-up gives you two options: to manually install the code yourself, or to email the instructions to someone else.

If you work with a website developer, you can simply email the instructions to them by clicking the grey Email Instructions button at the bottom of the pop up. Then jump to instruction xx in this guide.

9. If you don’t work with a developer, you’ll need to access the backend of your website yourself to add the Pixel. Follow the four instructions Facebook provides in the pop up.

10. Once you have added the code to your website, click Continue.

11. The next pop-up will allow you to set up Events. Setting up Events is optional – if you’d just like to simply track people who visit your website, you can finish the set up at this point. If you’d like to track different pages and actions on your website, we recommend using Facebook’s event setup tool to create these. Selecting that option will open up this screen.

12. Type the URL of your website into the box and select ‘Open Website’. This will load your website in a separate tab. You’ll be shown a quick introduction to the event setup tool – click through this.

13. A pop up in the left-hand corner of your website will then appear, like this:

14. Select ‘Track a URL’.

As simple as that!

Let us know how you get on. If you have any difficulties setting up Facebook Pixel please drop us a note here.

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